Wharton's connection to the Gothic (Afterward)
The story can be interpreted in many ways. The aspects that are mentioned here are the most relevant ones, but before a look is taken at those aspects, it might be necessary to understand Wharton’s connection to the Gothic first because this is, of course, one of her Gothic stories. Wharton used the gothic in her stories regularly to explore the world without the restraints of realism. The Gothic allowed her to speak of topics like sexuality, rage, death, fear and the true nature of women and men. It allowed her to press the limits of rationality because Gothic stories are not real, they invite the writer and the reader to expand their sense of reality (Fedorko1 3).
Wharton’s society and especially her mother formed her female self. As such, she was constantly threatened by a confining and judgemental world. Wharton used her creativity to make up stories with which she escaped this world. This in return increased her interest in stories and writing. The passion for writing and her intellect were traits that estranged her from her female self because both where traits that belonged to the males of Wharton’s time. This knowledge, that she had male-identified traits, shamed young Edith Wharton. The girl saw herself as different from other girls because of her intellect and her interest in language (Fedorko2 4-5). The society of old New York did not approve of female writing. This is the reason why Wharton’s literary success was met with confusion, embarrassment, and silence from her own family. No one wanted to talk to her about her writing, instead, they all ignored it as if it were some kind of disgrace. So writing was like sex because it was looked down upon if it was “done” by a woman. The society saw both as something unladylike, uncontrolled and infinitely naughty (Fedorko2 5).
At the age of nine, she suffered from a bout of typhoid. As she recuperated from the sickness, she was given a book. Said book contained a ghost story and would have been harmless to children without Wharton’s creativity and imagination, but to her it was terrifying. So terrifying that she lived in chronic fear. She was never able to describe the terror that haunted her, but it made her so anxious that until the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight she was unable to sleep in a room that contained a book with ghost stories. Furthermore, she was so scared by the books themselves that she didn’t want them in the library, she rather burnt them to get really rid of them (Fedorko2 11-12).
In Wharton’s Gothic, characters usually face the abyss. This means that they come to realize themselves and their inner life (Fedorko2 8). By the end of “Afterward”, Mary Boyne faces the abyss as she acknowledges and realizes the supernatural. Before that moment, the reader already gets to know that Mary has an inner conflict due to the fact that she thinks it is okay to show a lack of interest in her husband’s business affairs. But at the same time, Mary also feels guilt for exactly this lack of interest. It is the “facing of the abyss” that makes Mary fully realize that her guilt is definitely justified and that she should have shown interest in how her husband made so much money in such a short timeframe.
Fedorko1, Kathy A. “”Forbidden Things”: Gothic confrontation with the Feminine in “The Young Gentlemen” and “Bewitched””. Edith Wharton Review. Vol. 11, No. 1 Spring, 1994: 3-9. Web. (online available under: https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/ewr11-1s94.pdf) (Retrieved 15/06/2019)
Fedorko2, Kathy A. Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1995. Print.